Class With Adam Aronovitz

The Conclusions We Make About People Before Really Knowing Them

Even a sheet of paper has two sides.

~Unknown

    A few days ago during english class we had a guest speaker, a good friend of Fitz’s, Adam Aronovitz. I walked into the library, lazy and tired, and plopped my backpack down against a wall. I saw a bunch of my classmates sitting on the stairs, so I joined them. We patiently waited, cracking jokes and talking to each other, until the the speaker began talking. 

    Adam started by talking to us in the library about what he does as a job. He seems to have a pretty cool job, he travels all around the world with students and guides them on trips. Adam has been to a lot of different places and seen a lot of different cultures which I found cool. After speaking about himself for a little about who he is and what he does, we started doing an activity. We were split into four groups by advisor. Each group got assigned a country, two of them got a rich country with lots of materials and resources (I was in that group), and two other groups got assigned a poor country with not many resources and not much wealth. Both groups read all about their own country, but knew little about the others. The main part of the activity is that my group got a lot of paper and other things which represented wealth, and we went over to the group without much wealth’s table and we offered them our resources to help build a monument of some sort. Since they did not know much about our country, they saw us as arrogant rich people, and since we had not learned about them, we saw them as poor people in need of help. 

    We wrapped up the activity with a discussion, each group said what they thought about the other. As I said earlier, they thought we were arrogant and rich and we thought the were helpless and poor. To conclude the whole conversation we read the description of each country out loud and finally all understood both countries. It was fascinating how we made all these conclusions about the countries after seeing how they acted, but we really did not know the story behind what they were doing. 

    I enjoyed this english class and I am glad that Mr. Aronovitz could join us for the class, it was a great learning experience about perspective and conclusions about people (or countries) that we make without knowing their true story.

How 9th grade could improve

The wants of a ninth grade boy 

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all

~Helen Keller

  My ninth grade experience has been a lot of fun so far, I enjoy the time I get to spend with my close friends at school. Although my year has been good, it could be better. There are some things that could be improved to make this year my best year at Fenn. The school spirit at Fenn has been burning out, we need to act soon to bring back the energetic, exciting community it used to be.

The Power of Hard Times

Hard Times Allow Us To Bounce Back Stronger

  Be thankful for hard times, for they have made you

~Leonardo Dicaprio

  Everyone experiences hard times, that's how we learn. I have been through hard times, but each hard time comes with a lesson which I use to learn and grow.  Hard times can take shape in many different ways. It could be when you lose a sports game or get a bad grade on an assignment. The Varsity soccer team fought hard in our game against St. Sebastians, but we let our guard down too soon. We made the mistake of getting ahead of ourselves, and not playing hard until the last whistle. We got up 3-0 by the end of the first half. As the second half started we thought we had this game in the bag, but we let our guard down too soon. St. Sebastian's fought back hard and came back with three crushing goals to make the score 3-3. Although this game ended in a tie, it really felt like a loss to all of us. We were ashamed that we had not played our hardest, and let each other down. Losing a game in soccer can be frustrating, although it may not be an incredibly hard time it is still upsetting . The thing about hard times is that even when we feel really down, we always bounce back harder. Next game we will come back stronger an seal off the win instead of letting it slip away from us, that's what hard times can do. The thing about hard times is that there is a good side to it; we use them to grow, to learn, and to come back stronger.